Homeless couple lives along Winter Park's chicest street

(Gary W. Green, Orlando Sentinel )

November 17, 2012|By Kate Santich, Orlando Sentinel

They linger at a sidewalk table on Winter Park's Park Avenue — he in a French-blue dress shirt, tan slacks and snakeskin boots; she in a silver halter dress with pixieish, strawberry-blond hair and a fragilely thin frame.

With them, as always, are their "children," a lanky, vigilant hound and an exuberant Shih Tzu-poodle pup.

"We are a colorful attraction here on Park Avenue," Raymond Forthuber admits. "But I'm sorry — it's not what I set out to do."

They may spend their days chatting up passers-by, debating the state of humanity, sipping coffee and puffing cigarettes with the exaggerated manner of movie stars from a bygone era. And when they are freshly showered and sharply dressed, which is often, they may be mistaken for eccentrics or artists.

But they are not.

Raymond, 54, and wife Sally, 69, are homeless.

And for six months they have lived, more or less, in this most unlikely of places: amid the rich, trendy and powerful of Park Avenue.

They're an $11,000-a-year Social Security couple in an $111,000-average-household-income city.

"Where am I supposed to be, begging at Lake Eola?" says Ray, indignantly. "I grew up in Winter Park. This is my home. And Sally loves it here."

But the love has not always been mutual.

Living in car

Kellie Strawley, a 29-year-old jewelry maker who works at the Morse Museum along Park Avenue, first noticed them last spring.

When she arrived for work each morning, they would be in the spot next to hers in the parking garage, Sally and Ray and dogs Jeb and Abbey all curled up in the couple's peeling 1992 Mercury Grand Marquis.

"At first I wasn't sure whether they were homeless, but then I got the impression that something was up, and a lot of other people who work on Park Avenue started talking about them, like, 'Are those people OK?' But eventually I just started talking to them, and I tried to help."

Yes, Ray was odd, what with his penchant for dressing like Doc Holliday or Wyatt Earp, but he also struck her as brilliant. He could quote the Bible and Jack Kerouac with equal ease, and he could captivate a crowd of strangers with historic tales of the Civil War.

Strawley began calling shelters, churches, charities — anyone who might take them in or offer aid. Some of the shelters had long waiting lists. Others said they had room, but that Sally would have to stay in one facility and Ray in another. No one would take the dogs.

And Ray and Sally weren't going anywhere without them.

"They're very, very nice, and since the summer [was] excruciatingly hot, I don't know how they managed to stay so nice," Strawley says. "But I didn't have any money, so there wasn't much else I could do."

After a while, a few of the garage's regular patrons began to complain, and the aging Grand Marquis and its occupants were evicted. For a few weeks, the family found a new temporary home in the parking garage for Rollins College, at Park Avenue's southern end.

But then they were evicted from there, too.

By that point, it was the dead of summer and they were in a car with power windows that didn't work, no functioning air conditioner and leaking brakes — a car that averaged 17 miles per gallon in its prime. At night, they would park beside the town's golf course, doors open, trying to catch a few winks between the intrusions of passing trains.

Kindness of strangers

"Raymond, please!" Sally interrupts. Her husband of 31 years is recounting the sad confluence of events he blames for their predicament: how he lost his job as a tour-bus driver in the early days of the recession. How the College Park farmhouse they rented for years became riddled with mold, making them both sick. And how an aggressive skin cancer on Ray's face led to expensive surgery when he had no health insurance.

His unemployment had run out in April 2010, and they watched their savings slowly evaporate, until all they had left were Sally's monthly Social Security checks: $900 and change, a large cut of which always went to the steep fees of payday lenders. There was never enough to save for rent or security deposits.

"Raymond, that isn't the story," Sally persists. "You know, how you are oriented to life will determine whether you even recognize the opportunities. Otherwise, life gets stinky. And everybody has stinky from time to time. But this story is about what we have received despite this."

There were the Winter Park police officers who brought them food for their dogs. The merchants who offered them something to eat. The investor who occasionally gave them money. The museum director's wife who helped Ray print his résumé. And there was Sally's sister-in-law, who sent enough for a week's stay in a cheap motel, where they could bathe and rest.

But some of those trying to help the couple were baffled.

Every suggestion she made, each job opportunity she found was met with resistance or excuses, says Winter Park police Officer Lina Strube, who works in the community-services division.